queenly

Then she tosses the cake in the garbage bag on the housekeeping trolley with a queenly flourish, all without breaking her stride to the elevator.

“You get knots, right?” could hardly be a tinier change, but many such changes, over many, many hours, smooth her annoyingly ellipsis-crowded writing into a natural, intimate spoken narrative — if always a queenly one.

Regal, queenly and majestic can sometimes register as standoffish or — gasp — going all Hollywood.

In an atmosphere of lavish pomp and royal luxury, the queenly Sugar Plum Fairy presides over choreographed tributes by different groups of leaping, frolicking, food-bearing “ambassadors.”

High and flinty, with a bone-deep coal-country drawl that refused to fade even as she ascended to a queenly position in the Nashville star system, her singing sliced through polished arrangements like a sharpened blade.